Hitler and the secret Satanic cult

At first glance, the large circular room in the basement of Wewelsburg Castle appears to be harmless enough. Smooth, finely cut stones pave the floor. Glistening rock walls arch majestically towards a high vaulted ceiling.

In the centre of the room lies a sunken circular altar with polished steps leading towards a burnt and cracked stone. From here you can see thirteen lanterns flickering on the curved walls. But it’s only when you look directly upwards that the room’s significance becomes shockingly clear. At the centre of the dome lies a giant swastika.

This room was the central temple of the Satanic cult that created and directed Germany’s Nazi party. This so called Vril Society counted many of Hitler’s henchmen as members, including Himmler, Bormann, and Hess. Central to the whole cult was Hitler, who they believed to be a psychic medium in contact with powerful forces that would create an all-conquering Aryan nation. Some saw him as the Dark Messiah.

Historians have tended to downplay the occult foundations of Nazism for fear of trivialising its heinous war crimes, but a recent documentary on the Discovery Channel laid bare the untold story of the secretive religion at the heart of fascist Germany. And bizarrely, it is thought to have been based on a 19th Century science fiction novel that predicted flying saucers, an alien race at the centre of the earth, and a mysterious force known as Vril.

“Occult myths played a central role in Nazism,” says Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, head of the Centre for the Study of Esotericism at Exeter University. “When we look at these ideas today, we think of them as crazy, but they were central to the early Nazi Party and through them played a critical role in 20th century history.”

“The Vril society was dedicated to evil,” says historian Michael Fitzgerald. “Through their control of the Nazi party they committed the greatest acts of evil in the 20th Century.

“Vril occultists worked in complete secrecy doing anything that would promote Aryan power. This ranged from straightforward political assassinations, through to evoking the spirits of the dead, human sacrifice and summoning mysterious energies – or Vril - through sexual orgies.”

To understand why the Nazi party was so obsessed with the occult and Satanism, you have to travel back to Victorian times. In the late 19th Century, Germany in common with Britain, was obsessed with the occult. It was a time when no self-respecting hostess would dream of holding a dinner party without a séance to round off the evening.

There was also huge interest in eastern mysticism and ‘prophets’ of occult religions, such as Madame Blavatsky, were household names. Blavatsky believed that Europeans were descended from a race of angel-like creatures known as Aryans. They claimed that the Aryans had used mysterious psychic forces to build the pyramids, Atlantis and a network of cities beneath Antarctica. What’s more, their descendants were to be found in the Himalayas and their sign was the swastika – the ancient Hindu good luck symbol.

These myths and more were crystallised in the science-fiction novel The Coming Race. In this, Edward Bulwer-Lytton told of a strange people called the Vril-Ya that lived at the centre of the Earth. They wielded fantastic power using a mysterious force known as Vril, which they also used to propel flying saucers.

The Coming Race and its attendant barmy mysticism would have sunk into obscurity if it hadn’t been for the First World War. At the end of the war, Germany was plunged into violent anarchy and a host of extremist politicians and cult leaders stepped into the breach and battled for power. Chief of these was the occult Thule Society – and its inner sect, the Vril Society.

The Vril Society was noted for it’s use of orgies to summon up occult energies – and to father a ‘master race’ of children to repopulate a devastated Germany. It is said that women in such orgies would become possessed by spirits and begin speaking in tongues. And their prophesies were treated with deadly seriousness.

“But the darkest side of the Vril was their propensity for sacrificing young children,” says Michael Fitzgerald, author of Stormtroopers of Satan. “They would stab them in the chest and cut their throats.

“At the height of their power in 1920s Munich, hundreds of children disappeared. Many are presumed to have been killed by the cult to summon up Vril energy. This may seem like an outlandish claim but when you consider what these people went on to do in the Third Reich, it seems almost tame.”

Central to the Vril Society was the search for a German Messiah who would lead the Aryan’s to world domination and exterminate all other races – especially the Jews. And his rise was predicted by a spirit calling itself the “Beast of the Book of Revelation.”

In a séance attended by the cult followers Alfred Rosenberg and Dietrich Eckart, the Beast is said to have proclaimed that a man named “Hitler” would seize the “Spear of Destiny” and lead the Aryans to power.

And within a few weeks, a fiery young man of shabby appearance began attending Thule Society meetings. His name was Adolf Hitler.

The Society was quick to spot Hitler’s potential and to exploit his astonishing personal magnetism. He could transform crowds into hysterical worshippers and mesmerise even the strongest of men. Power seemed to course through him, with waves of emotion whipping up those around him into a frenzy. At times, he seemed possessed.